Abortion is an LGBTQ issue, too, advocates stress

NBC News
by Alex Berg
January 22, 2018

Sam Romero said that it was while working on the 2014 campaign of Wendy Davis, an abortion-rights supporter running for Texas governor, that she decided to open up about having had an abortion at 23. But Romero, now 28, who identifies as queer, said that being out about both her sexual orientation and having had an abortion has brought her to an uncomfortable realization.

“When I talk about my abortion, people assume I’m straight. When I talk about being queer, people don’t imagine that I’ve had an abortion before,” she told NBC News. “It’s been hard to live with both identities in a way that I feel other people can understand.”

Romero, who said she has had both male and female sexual partners, stressed, “I’m not disqualified from being queer because I’ve had an abortion.”

Forty-five years after the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion, LGBTQ people and their advocates say abortion is still thought of as something that only affects heterosexual people. This misconception, they say, leads to very real barriers.